


Love and Marriage

by shewhoguards



Category: The Chronicles of Chrestomanci - Diana Wynne Jones
Genre: Arguments, F/M, Happy Ending, Newly weds, marriage is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-23
Updated: 2015-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-08 17:52:47
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,387
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5507213
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/shewhoguards/pseuds/shewhoguards
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Romantic it might be, but there was a limit to how much you could smile at each other, how many pet names you could find for each other and how many times people could pointedly leave you alone together before it all got a bit.. dull really. And there was a feeling as though that status had to be maintained, as though the first person to break it by speaking a cross word or even voicing a minor annoyance might be breaking something precious.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Love and Marriage

**Author's Note:**

  * For [magpieinthesky](https://archiveofourown.org/users/magpieinthesky/gifts).



The wedding had been lovely, everyone had agreed on that. Afterwards, Millie and Christopher had remained for almost a month in a state of blissfully loving harmony. Busy though Chrestomanci Castle usually was, the Castle staff had smiled to themselves and given the pair space. When it came to those two, raised by the Castle almost from childhood, people were more than happy to make a few allowances and look the other way if they occasionally arrived late to a meeting or looking slightly more mussed than might be expected.

In fact, though Millie couldn’t quite admit it even to herself, it had possibly gone a little too far. Romantic it might be, but there was a limit to how much you could smile at each other, how many pet names you could find for each other and how many times people could pointedly leave you alone together before it all got a bit.. dull really. And there was a feeling as though that status had to be maintained, as though the first person to break it by speaking a cross word or even voicing a minor annoyance might be breaking something precious. After a month, she was more than ready to return to living a little more normally – normally but married, obviously, but life had to go on as usual at some point.

Unfortunately, before it could there was paperwork to be done. To be specific, there were thank you letters to be written. Hundreds of the damned things.

The wedding of the young Chrestomanci-to-be was no small affair, and there were plenty of people across the Series’ who were anxious to ensure they had noted it somehow. Of course, in the Civil Service there was a limit to the size of gifts that could be accepted, but there seemed to be no limit as to the quantity. There were more glasses than anyone could ever use; tea-pots and cutlery sets; table-cloths and towels. It would have been possible to run the castle for the next century without buying anything new, and still donate a large amount to anyone else who could use it. That was all very well, but each and every one of those senders had to be acknowledged for fear of causing terrible offense.

Christopher was busy – off doing something terrible important somewhere in the Castle – and Millie had already ignored the list of senders for several weeks in the hope it would somehow vanish. It did not appear to have done so. She sighed, pulled out a chair, and got to work.

Three hours later, though she had a stack of letters beside her and a fetching new blister from her pen rubbing against her finger, she had barely made a scratch on the work to be done. What was more, she was running out of imaginative ways to praise the glasses/teapot/towels and promise they would somehow be used. She sighed, prodding at the blister, and wondered whether it might have been easier just to elope.

It was not the best time for Christopher to stride in to the room, all energy and enthusiasm and with very little care for what she might have been doing.

“Millie!” he called. “Come and see what we’ve been working on – there’s a hole in these numbers somewhere and I think we’ve repaired it but I want another pair of eyes on it just to be certain.”

It would have been a huge relief just to get up and do as he asked, but Millie had a sneaking suspicion that if she left the letters alone now she would find reasons not to touch them again for another six months.

“Can’t,” she said miserably, picking up the pen again. “Got to finish these.”

“Why, what are you – oh. Those silly things.” Christopher came over to investigate and made a face when he realised what she was doing. “I was trying not to think about them.”

“Yes, well, so was I, but they need doing,” Millie said. “It would go a lot quicker if there were two of us – I’ve done a great stack already, look,” she added hopefully, gesturing to the pile already completed.

She had been hoping he might sit down and help her make a dent on them, or at least acknowledge that she’d clearly been working hard on them. Instead, Christopher examined her pile of completed letters for a moment and then, almost lazily, flapped a hand.

“There now. All sorted.”

The list in front of Millie suddenly filled with small black ticks, whilst beside her a great mountain of sealed and addressed envelopes appeared. She perhaps should have felt relieved but instead she stared in something akin to panic as she flipped through her notes to find every name ticked off.

“Christopher!” she protested. “Put it back! I won’t have any idea which I’ve done now – do you know how long those took me?”

Christopher looked surprised, although not altogether concerned. “Oh well, you should have asked me earlier then,” he said carelessly, as though her earlier efforts might be written off as nothing at all. “Anyway, it hardly matters when they’re all done now.”

“You can’t just – Christopher!” Millie’s voice rose a little as he reached to take the list out of her hands. “This isn’t something you can magic away! They all need individual notes on whatever they bought and why it was nice.” Perhaps she was louder about it because it hadn’t truly been a job that she wanted to do, or maybe it was just having three hours’ dull work brushed away as nothing.

“Yes, yes.” Christopher waved her objections away, looking bored with them now. “I’ve done that too. Listen, I need you to come and look at these numbers, I tell you. Someone will post these later or check them or something, this is actually important.”

“ _This_ was important!” Millie retrieved her list from his hands with an angry tug. “Christopher, will you _listen_ to me?”

But now he was starting to look annoyed too. “I don’t see why you’re over-reacting like this!” he protested. “You wanted it doing, so I’ve done it. What’s the problem?”

“You can’t just make boring jobs go away by using magic!” Oh dear. The blissful loved-up feeling was most definitely vanishing now. Millie resisted the urge to stamp her foot. “It doesn’t do any good just magically completing letters, people will get offended.”

“Millie, you were hardly going to manage to complete several hundred letters by hand on your own,” Christopher pointed out, sounding as though he was badly trying to be the reasonable one.

“That was why,” she informed him angrily, “you were meant to _help!”_

“I _did_ help!” Christopher retorted. “I don’t see why you’re being so ungrateful about it. If you wanted it done sooner, you should have asked!” He waved a hand again, irritated. The pile of letters vanished along with the ticks – and the ones she had already done vanished with them. “There! If you’re so set on doing it, _do_ it, if it matters so much to you!”

Millie stared at the space where they had been disbelievingly. The temptation was just to throw the list at Christopher, but they weren’t children any more and what was acceptable in a thirteen year old was less so in an adult. Instead, Millie turned away, not trusting herself to speak lest she said too much.

“Where are you going?” Christopher said plaintively as she walked away. “I wanted you to look at these numbers – Millie! Stop being so stupid about it!”

*

After so long being nice to each other it was actually quite nice to allow yourself to sulk for a little while. Millie indulged herself, letting herself go over the argument in her head and pinpoint every little unreasonable word or deed. Her behaviour, clearly, had been impeccable – it was just like Christopher to fail to understand the value of proper hard work. If you couldn’t do it in five seconds with a spell he wasn’t interested – never mind that _someone_ had to take care of all the boring jobs.

And, maybe because it had been several weeks since she’d allowed herself to think a nasty thought about Christopher, it was only a short step from there to all of the other minor irritating things he’d done lately. There was the point at the wedding where he’d wandered off mid-conversation, leaving her with no way to escape the extremely dull old man from Sector Four who only appeared to hear every other word. There was his eagerness to go off the day before the wedding with Conrad and leave the Castle staff to do all the work, apparently oblivious to just how much they would be needed for. There were a hundred minor things; gripes over creased shirts, stolen blankets in the middle of the night, comments that on reflection were just a little too patronising. More than enough to work herself up into a temper.

(There was also the cup of tea that had magically appeared at her side in bed at the point where she was thinking she didn’t want to get up; the polite but deadly way he had spoken to the man he had overheard implying that Millie had only married him for the status; and the speed with which he had dealt with the florist who had accidentally delivered roses, which she was highly allergic to. But Millie wasn’t thinking of nice things at that point, only nasty ones, so they didn’t count.)

And it was easy to indulge a bad mood at the Castle, maybe too easy. It was a big place; if Millie wanted to avoid Christopher for a while she could. It was simple enough to seat herself next to someone else at dinner, ignoring Christopher’s startled look and using the excuse of wanting a change in conversation. She had more than enough work that didn’t involve Christopher to bury herself in it and keep herself occupied. And, most importantly, if she wanted a night without him snoring next to her, her old room was still there and unoccupied and no-one was likely to say a word about changing the sheets.

All of which was all very petty, and she might have worked it out of her system by the next day, except that Christopher could also do a good line in petty when it suited him. Notes started to arrive, delivered by apologetic staff – who really had no need to be involved when he could have just sent them to her. There were suggestions of undone tasks that he would be “much obliged if she could see her way to completing”; a coldly polite reminder that she needed to have an outfit ready for meeting a guest from Sector Six next week; a request that she stop humming around the castle as “the noise was distracting”.

And of course neither of them bothered to give each other all the truly important little reminders that they had become used to relying on. Christopher forgot entirely that he was meant to be visiting Sector Nine one morning, and was summoned in his dressing gown. Millie was highly surprised when a group of school children from the village arrived for their promised tour of the Castle. It wasn’t that they couldn’t remember those things themselves, or have staff do so. It was simply that they had become used to relying on each other.

By the second day, Millie was ready to make up. Or rather, she was ready to have Christopher come and apologize so that they could make up. It was, after all, his fault that they had started this whole argument.

By the third day, having received several of his chillier notes, she had resolved never to apologise to him even if he begged her. Staff were starting to catch each other’s eyes and hurry in the other direction when approached to take a message.

By the fourth day, having slept very little over the previous three nights, Millie was upset, over-tired and starting to rethink whether this whole marriage idea had been stupid to start with. Tensions in the Castle felt stretched to breaking point, people who she _knew_ normally liked her wouldn’t meet her face any more, and somehow, she wasn’t sure how, she felt as though she had been turned into the villain in this whole affair.

She was seriously considering packing up her things and going to stay with Conrad, at least for a short while, when there was a knock at the bedroom door.

When she had thought of Christopher over the last few days she had imagined him briskly getting on with life in his usual coolly competent way, occasionally pausing to write her another sarcastic note. Clearly, if everyone in the Castle was behaving so stiffly towards her, they _must_ be on his side so there was no reason he shouldn’t be absolutely fine. In fact, it was the image of him calmly getting on with life and ignoring her anger that had driven Millie further and further into fury.

In fact, the only times she had seen Christopher looking quite so bad before he had been touching silver. He drooped, his height making him seem more like an unwatered plant than his usual tall and rather formidable self. And from the look of his face, he hadn’t slept for a few nights either.

“Can we talk?” he asked, and came in without waiting for a reply, throwing himself down on her bed. “I can’t do this anymore,” he said, more to Millie’s ceiling than to her. “I feel like I’ve turned into my parents, and there wasn’t anything I ever wanted less. Can we stop, please?”

There wasn’t anything in the world that Millie wanted more, but that was too intriguing not to query. She perched on the edge of her bed. “Your parents?”

The face Christopher turned to her looked ghastly, like a skull with skin stretched over it. “Sending notes to each other. Ignoring each other at the table. Insulting each other through other people.” He rubbed his face tiredly. “All we need to do is have a child to forget about except when we want to make it the subject of an argument and we’d have the impression off pat.”

Millie winced. “We’re not going to do that,” she assured him, resisting with great effort the urge to just put her arms around him and make things better. It was difficult to remember that she was still being angry with him.

“No? Because we’re doing a great impression on the rest.” Christopher said, sounding exhausted. “Half the castle is avoiding me, and Gabriel keeps looking at me as though he wished I were still old enough to send to my room. Rosalie keeps looking at me as though she’s going to cry. Everyone’s stopped talking at dinner, and I feel like I’m five years old again.” He clutched at his head, leaving the usually smooth, dark hair sticking up in spikes. “ _Please_ can we stop. This is awful, and I’m not even sure what we were arguing about to start with.”

Oh. Well, that did make Millie feel somewhat better. Relaxing a little, she lay down next to him. “They’re avoiding me too,” she admitted. “I thought it meant they were on _your_ side.”

“Really? Because I’m not even sure what my side is any more,” Christopher said frankly, turning his head to look at her again. He shook his head as she started to frown. “Oh, I’m aware that I must have been very aggravating _somehow_ for all this to have happened, but I couldn’t for the life of me tell you how.” Quietly, he added, “I _was_ trying to help.”

Millie was silent for a moment, trying to think how best to explain what had so infuriated her. Finally, she said, “I had worked for three hours on those letters. Three _hours_ making sure that the wording on each one was perfect and the handwriting was neat. Then you just breezed in and waved a hand and magicked them away as though they were nothing.”

Christopher stared at her, clearly trying to summon up an answer. “I didn’t think you wanted to do them.”

“I didn’t!” Millie shook her head. “There was nothing I wanted to do less! But.. they had to be done, so I wanted to be sure they were done properly. You’re meant to say thank you properly when people give you things, and not take short-cuts. They were very strict on it at school.”

Christopher looked a little nonplussed. “You should have said.”

“I _did!”_ Millie exclaimed and felt her eyes smart with tears, more from anger than anything else. “Then you started sending those awful notes, as though I were some.. minor witch or something who was failing to do my job properly.”

“You wouldn’t sit next to me at dinner!” Christopher retorted, though he did look rather ashamed of himself. They stared at each other in silence until, after a moment, he reached to squeeze her hand. “I thought you might leave,” he admitted very quietly. “Every time I sent you anything, I would be sitting at the window five minutes later, watching in case you stormed out. Only then I’d find you’d hidden my favourite pyjamas or something and I knew it was so damned petty but I couldn’t seem to stop responding.”

Millie looked at him oddly, deciding it was perhaps best not to mention that she had considered going to stay with Conrad. “Hidden your favourite pyjamas?”

Christopher blinked at her. “That wasn’t you?”

“Have you tried looking to see if they’re hanging by the fire? That’s where they usually set things to dry and warm.” And Millie usually made sure they were sitting on Christopher’s pillow before he came up to bed.

Christopher looked suddenly sheepish, clearly coming to the same realisation. “…Oh.” He cleared his throat. “I ah, may owe you an apology.”

“Yes.” Millie lay her head on the pillow, suddenly weary. “And I owe you one. Can we start again?”

Very gently, Christopher slid his arms around her, pulling her closer. “Excellent idea.” He kissed her cheek lightly, already looking better. “Never fight again?”

“That would be a stupid thing to promise,” Millie pointed out, thankfully leaning her head against his chest. “We’ve never managed it for a month at a time before, so why should we now we’re married? But.. can we just not involve anyone else next time?”

“I can go along with that idea,” Christopher conceded, stroking warm fingers along her back. “And.. no avoiding each other? Let’s at least get all arguments done face to face.”

“Face to face, and without witnesses to pull in,” Millie agreed. She tipped her face up to his, serious for a moment. “We still have to write thank you letters though.”

“We will. Tomorrow.” He agreed to that a little too quickly, too eager to make up, so Millie set her hand on his chest and waited until he looked at her.

“Properly. Without magic,” she clarified firmly. Because the last thing she wanted to have this argument all over again tomorrow.

Christopher sighed, but considered before suggesting a counter-offer. “Can we at least get people to help?” Seeing she might protest, he added hurriedly, “My love, no-one expects me to answer all correspondence, not even Gabriel, and nor do they expect you to do it for me. All that is expected is that I actually read and sign it – and I will, I promise.”

Millie hesitated, considering that, her opinion just possibly affected by the kisses he was pressing to her face as she thought. “Every single one?”

“And I will make sure they compliment every ugly vase, and every towel set, even if we have fifty of them already,” Christopher promised. “Unless you really and truly want to do it by hand ourselves – in which case we can, but it might take a week.”

She hadn’t really wanted to do the job anyway. Millie nodded. “And next time..”

“I ask, and don’t just assume,” Christopher completed, sounding very much relieved. “Shall we just stay in here for tonight?”

And that too sounded like a very good idea.

 

 

 


End file.
